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Nurse Who Testified Against Michael Schivo Has Nursing Licence Revoked

By Peter J. Smith

Florida, June 30, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A North Country Gazette exclusive reveals that Florida’s Department of Health has demanded the nursing license and nearly $1700 dollars in fines and administrative costs from a nurse who gave public testimony in the case of Terri Schiavo. This comes at the same time that the Department of Health has dropped action against Michael Schiavo, also a registered nurse, for falsifying his guardianship papers.

Carla Sauer Iyer, a nurse who cared for Terri Schiavo until 1996, has given numerous affidavits on her experience with Terri, and is facing the wrath of the DOH for repeating the public record in a CNN interview.

The Department of Health launched it’s campaign to strip Ms. Iyer of her nurse’s license after receiving a complaint from a Ms. Eileen Sullivan about Ms. Iyer’s statements to CNN’s Bill Hemmer in a March 21, 2005 interview. Sullivan said in her complaint that Iyer made “inflammatory comments” by revealing that Michael Schiavo’s care of Terri included words such as “when is that bitch going to die?” Ms. Sullivan demanded that “Ms. Sauer-Iyer should be disciplined for her breach of faith with Theresa Schiavo and with her profession as a registered nurse”.

As the Gazette reports, the complaint filed in April remained dormant for 11 months until evidence was released in March 2006 that Michael Schiavo had falsified his guardianship papers, by perjuring his oath that he had received a degree from Buck’s Community College. The DOH, however, found that in light of this evidence there was “no probable cause” to discipline Michael for these offences, but discovered “probable cause” to revoke Iyer of her nursing license for discussing the public record of her experiences with Terri on CNN. 

Ms. Iyer’s attorney, Allen Grossman, has pointed out that all of Ms. Iyer’s statements were apart of the public record, and thus did not involve a breach of confidential information. Grossman said that her CNN interview was “little more than a rendition of the same information already provided in the public record”, and that the “privilege of confidentiality is waived to the extent that the patient’s medical/mental status is placed directly at issue in a legal proceeding.”

The Gazette conducted an exclusive interview in which Ms. Sullivan said that even though what Ms. Iyer spoke about had been public record for over 18 months, the difference was that the CNN interview reached “millions of viewers”, instead of confining the facts to an obscure courtroom. Ms. Sullivan also stated that while she did not know that Michael Schiavo was also a registered nurse since January 2000, she thought it was entirely proper that he discuss Schiavo's case as part of the legal proceedings he needed to defend.

Among the facts revealed to the broader public in the CNN interview was that Iyer witnessed Terri say, “Mommy, help me”, and “pain”, and would also interact with the nurses and visitors. Iyer maintained that there exists over 4 hours of videotape from ’95 and ’96 proving this, but that it was placed under gag-order, including her own testimony about Michael Schiavo’s treatment of Terri.

This is not the first time the allies of Michael Schiavo have acted to end Ms. Iyer’s career. Ms. Iyer’s care of Terri Schiavo was ended back in 1996 after she informed the police and her superiors of Palm Garden of Largo Convalescent Center in Largo, Florida that she believed Michael Schiavo attempted to kill his wife with insulin injections. She claims she discovered needle marks on Terri, and found that Terri’s blood sugar was so dangerously low that her levels would not register on a glucometer. Instead of having an investigation launched into the matter, her career was terminated.

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